


Find My Own Bravado

by missgoalie75



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Gender or Sex Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:31:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1747991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missgoalie75/pseuds/missgoalie75
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She likes her mayhem and chaos, her music loud and shirts obnoxious and offensive, but. She likes shooting fleeting smiles at Rory when nobody else is looking and she likes the calm quiet that comes with reading on the secluded bridge, the only damn good thing about this small-minded town. It almost tricks her brain into thinking that she's not a raging leviathan under her skin, burning end after end of cigarettes and the back of her throat as she downs alcohol like water (she did learn the best from Mommy dearest).</i> || The story of Rory and Jess if they were sex swapped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find My Own Bravado

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The title is from "Bravado" by Lorde.
> 
> Warnings: language, cissex swap of the kids but NOT of the adults, a scene of a sexual nature, somewhat AU in certain scenes.

Jess has always taken a visceral pleasure in controlling. It's all about fucking guys into the mattress or the floor, grinding her hips down at a pace she sets since the only time she ever lets herself be at the mercy of anyone, it's the likes of Faulkner and Salinger and Sir Alexandre Dumas; she'll take her pleasure wherever and whenever, but she'll only let the best catch hold of her.

So. It's an interesting surprise when she meets a guy with pretty blue eyes and neat brown hair that she automatically wants to mess with her hands, who knows his literature.

_Goodnight, Dodger._

She smiles to herself as she lights a cigarette, half hanging out of an open window in the apartment above the diner.

**

She likes her mayhem and chaos, her music loud and shirts obnoxious and offensive, but.

She likes shooting fleeting smiles at Rory when nobody else is looking and she likes the calm quiet that comes with reading on the secluded bridge, the only damn good thing about this small-minded town. It almost tricks her brain into thinking that she's not a raging leviathan under her skin, burning end after end of cigarettes and the back of her throat as she downs alcohol like water (she did learn the best from Mommy dearest).

**

Lorelai only hates her because she _sees_ herself in Jess, which makes Jess want to _laugh_ and _laugh_.

"Spoiled little rich girl, angsting over her parents providing the best for her and throwing it away," Jess grumbles as she carves into the bridge with her broken pencil. It's been a few days since the attempt at getting along for Rory's sake.

"I'm sure you would've done the same thing in her shoes, being so similar and all," Rory counters. "Besides, suffering is relative," he points out calmly. His eyes are a still blue that almost make her want pause.

She smirks and looks back down at the bridge. "Don't I know it." She glances back up again. "Don't you."

Rory exhales softly through his nose. "I suppose."

He needs to go home and start his homework – he only came to find her to convince her to read the book he just finished, but it's been almost two hours since and he seems content where he is. She doesn't bother reminding him.

**

Although it's funny, she realizes she doesn't really hate Luke that much, not when they're really cut from the same cloth – the only sane bit in the madness that is the Mariano-Danes family.

(She steals a flannel shirt of his and tears it up and sews it back together; he pretends to be pissed off, but he admires her work and it would be weird since he wears the same fucking thing everyday and wouldn't know fashion even if it pranced in the diner naked, but it still means something.)

**

She considers herself to be somewhat of a renaissance woman, despite everyone telling her that she's a "problem child" (they usually mean a delinquent, or a slut, or both) – she can fix toasters and sew patches on her clothes and steal five hundred baseballs without anyone catching her. She can remember pages of literature in minutes and if she gave a shit about learning math, she'd probably be more than decent at it.

But what's the fun in being academically inclined if you don't make stuck-up teachers cry?

(She did, once, when she was in junior high – it's a goal to make a teacher cry at Stars Hollow High, but they're uncreative with sending her to the principal's office as soon as she puts a toe out of line.)

**

Rory likes to give the impression that he's a perfect angel who is completely satisfied with every aspect of his life, but she knows better. She sees the boredom on his face when he's listening to Deanna ramble about something or other. She sees rage flashing behind his eyes when Taylor does something incredibly stupid through his abuse of power in the dinky town government.

It's a shame, really, that he feels the need to censor himself all the time; she knows there's something glorious in him.

**

She's more than a little surprised when he kisses her. Actually, the entire situation is really fucked up because she's left there dumbfounded while he _runs away_ with a " _Welcome home!_ " because he's actually a loser and _why does she care this much_? When the fuck did that happen? In between getting immediate approval from his hard-to-please, nutjob friend ( _National Enquirer_ of the fifties _my ass_ ) and totaling his fucking car? When he offered her an egg roll? Earlier?

"Fuck me," she mutters into her hands before making her way back to the diner.

**

What's really disgusting about that summer is she becomes that _fucking_ person – that pathetic piece of crap she _never_ thought she'd be, but here she is: week seven of summer vacation and she needs to find a hot guy to fuck around with before Rory Gilmore comes back from DC.

Waiting by the phone? Checking the mail? Living in suburbia has made her _weak_.

**

Rory looks _hot_ and this blond idiot Shane she's hooking up with is just barely doing it for her.

The only satisfaction that comes with groping Shane's ass in public is she can _feel_ Rory's eyes burning into the back of her skull.

(It's just too bad they can't talk anymore – she misses that even though she'd rather die than admit that.)

**

The fifth time she overhears someone calling her a slut while with Shane, she breaks into Doose's Market and loosens screws on half the shelves, getting a sharp thrill when she hears loud crashes throughout the night and into the morning, ending with Taylor screaming as she drives to school. Serves him fucking right for saying it enough times.

But the most absurd thing is, she has overheard Lorelai call her that too. So much for sex-positivity and feminism.

**

Jess likes her kisses deep and rough with a bite, but there's something about taking her time with Rory at the gas station, mouth moving slowly against his as he lightly touches her face.

"I'm glad you didn't smoke it," he says, his smile too charming and fuck, at this rate, she'll give up smoking for good if it makes him look at her like that.

He rambles about looking forward to many similar occurrences in the future – it shouldn't be adorable.

She is _way_ over her goddamn head.

**

Luke tries to give Jess The Talk involving this thing with Rory and she has to admit, it's kind of nice to have someone actually be concerned for her person (" _You know…you don't have to do anything you don't want to…_ " and " _I know Rory is a good guy, but…he's still a guy and if he does anything…you can tell me…_ "), even if she is long passed being new to sex.

**

But as it turns out, sex with Rory is what really throws her off – she's not used to it actually _meaning_ something, even when it's kind of mediocre.

He hides his face in the crook of her neck, embarrassed. "Sorry."

She pats his shoulder. "Practice makes perfect, Gilmore. Don't beat yourself up about it."

He lifts his head and looks at her with almost-reverence – it's weird and it makes her uncomfortable. "You really don't judge people, do you."

"Well, _sure_ I do –"

"Yeah, but –"

She sighs, bringing a hand to cup his cheek to stop him from talking. "Not all is lost," she quips, hoping to deflect him because it'll be hard to explain it all. "You can still make me come to salvage the night."

He laughs. "That I can do."

She has to direct him since apparently he and Deanna never got very far (shocker there – he may have been dating her for years, but he's clearly a gentleman Raised Right and Deanna doesn't seem to have embraced her sexuality, which is A-OK by Jess on principled and petty levels. Sure, Rory's mom has done a good job at instilling some feminist instincts in him, but Jess will be _so_ good about this part). But Rory is a bright and talented student; he learns.

When he lifts his head from between her legs, she tries to grin as she catches her breath. "A-plus with a gold star."

**

Emily Gilmore _hates_ Jess Mariano. Granted, Jess didn't give her the _best_ impression, but she wrote her off from the start; she wants Rory to date a Nice Girl who wears dresses and skirts that go down to her knees and pantyhose and refined manners.

"Is Jess short for Jessica?" Emily inquires during the appetizer.

"Nope."

There's an awkward silence until Rory adds, "It's not a nickname. I thought it was, but I saw her license, so."

"Oh, so she does have a driver's license."

Jess grips her fork tightly and clenches her jaw (play nice, _play nice_ ) – 

(It gets harder and harder.)

**

The only thing she tells Rory as he's deciding between what Ivy League school to attend (Jesus _Christ_ ) is that if he goes to Princeton, he'll have to live in New Jersey.

"Nobody will visit you in Jersey," she tells him as they're walking around a book barn they drove almost two hours to get to.

Rory snorts. "That's what my grandparents said."

"They shouldn't talk – New Haven isn't that much different from a dump."

"Yale is in a nice part of New Haven."

"It's still New Haven."

Rory rolls his eyes. "Other than that very serious opinion?"

She sighs, taking out a copy of _The Things They Carried_ – hers went missing when she went back to the city last May. "Don't let your family make you feel obligated to go anywhere." She pins him down with a hard stare. "It's your life, Rory. Go where you think you'll be happy – even if it's in a dump like New Haven or the armpit of America," she finishes on a teasing note.

"No thoughts on Boston?"

She shrugs. "I haven't been." She leans into his side a little and he automatically brings an arm around her waist. She might go there if Rory goes to Harvard, but she doesn't tell him that.

**

What she _does_ tell him a few weeks later is that there are twenty-two-point-eight miles between Stars Hollow and New Haven.

**

She thinks a cinder from the inn fire caught onto her because it seems everything has combusted, leaving her with nothing but ashes and smoke, choking her.

It's probably why she wasn't able to say anything on the bus and why she couldn't open her fucking mouth at a payphone thousands of miles away in picture-perfect California.

**

It's not really encouraging from the looks of things – her dad, the parent she seems to have inherited the most from, for all his bumbling and fucking around for years has settled in a beach town and opened up a _hotdog stand_.

But there's Sasha, who doesn't press and leaves her be, but still present in a way Jess isn't used to, and there's Liam – dorky, weird Liam who's about as anti-social as she is, but loves fiercely and openly.

Luke was always so fucking worried about not being enough for her and her needing a 'proper woman's presence' and it used to piss her off so much; she didn't really _get it_ until her few months in Venice Beach.

(She considers calling him or sending a post card, but she doesn't – the fight they had in the apartment is still fresh.)

**

(She always thinks about calling Rory, but digs her nails into her palms and continues on.)

**

She does call her mom though. There will always be a bitterness there, most of it stemming from _why_ , but she's come to accept that her mom was just never strong and that's how she'll always be; people don't really change.

Except it's weird – her druggie mom has always been this awful constant in her life and yet she's the first person to actually _change_ and become something better (which is a new bitter pill for Jess to swallow; apparently she's not enough but some _guy_ is, but, honestly, she isn't one to talk).

**

Traveling from Venice Beach to the east coast is hard – she has to pay her way since god forbid she can hitch hike without the fear of being attacked. She ends up having to stay in places for too long and it makes her restless and angry.

So when she finds out from her mom that Luke was the one who stole her fucking car, she's ready to set everything in flames.

**

She breaks into the shed, finds her fucking car there, and is ready to get the hell out of dodge until she checks the oil and realize it's running on fumes and that at least two of the tires have lost a substantial amount of air; she's not getting anywhere with this hunk of metal and she fucking _loses it_.

Luke is there in the fucking diner and his face is pretty comical, but then it quickly dissolves into yelling, back and forth about Liz and _family_ and what the fuck do either of them know about _family_?

When they've stopped shouting and she's breathing too hard, wondering _what the fuck now_ , Luke says, "Want something to eat?"

She laughs in disbelief with her next exhale. She's exhausted and hasn't eaten in a day and her toes are numb, but she leaves her pride out the door for food and coffee.

**

"Rory's in town," Luke says. They've come to an impasse and have been sitting in silence as Jess tries not to scarf down her scrambled eggs. "Firelight Festival tomorrow."

She almost vomits her food back up. "Hm." She clears her throat and puts down her fork, picking up her coffee.

Luke looks like he wants to say something, no doubt about what she did was cold and awful and mean and _Rory is such a nice boy why would you do that to him_?

She clenches her jaw and asks, "Mind if I crash here tonight?"

"Well, it's either that or having you freeze in the back of your car."

She smiles a little.

**

She knows she acts like an asshole, but when it comes down to it, she's not a _real_ asshole, so when she bumps into Rory, she quickly gets out of his way – she knows she's not welcome here – she can feel everyone glaring holes into her back. Rory probably hates her, so why make this situation worse than it already is?

(It's weird seeing him with such short hair – it's like he's trying to play grown up, but it doesn't look quite right.)

**

Just when there's a tentative truce, Luke seems to push all her fucking buttons at once with Liz and her loser boyfriends.

That, of course, incurs the wrath of Lorelai Fucking Gilmore, who can't leave well enough alone and who can't seem to get her head out of her ass and realize she's in love with Luke.

Jess needs to get out of this town.

**

She doesn't realize she's crying until she can't read the Welcome to New York sign on I-95 South.

(She wastes _I love you_ on a boy who, for always having a quick remark on the tip of his tongue, can't manage to say anything.)

**

It's not like she expected him to do anything, but. (She wanted him to.)

**

But really, that's not where she gets the most embarrassed.

No, what takes the cake is reading a self-help book and driving twenty-two-point-eight miles to Rory's dorm in some sad attempt to figure shit out, and seeing him with _Deanna_. All in one day.

"God, to think that I wanted to run away with you," she says with a strangled laugh.

"To think that you believed for a second I'd say yes," he retorts.

And that's that.

**

You can only go up from there – that's something positive.

**

She writes in a spiral notebook that she bought for a buck and surprisingly, it's the most cathartic experience she's ever really had.

She finds two girls on Locust Street in Philly – boldly running an indie press with quick wit and nerves of steel and she thinks she's actually found somewhere she feels comfortable in.

(It's almost like expanding the Stars Hollow bridge experience or the way she felt standing behind the counter holding Rory's hands, but more solid, like it's not going to give way at any second.)

**

The thing is, Rory has always looked the part of an upper class gentleman when he's dressed in his Chilton uniform and the way he's always unfailingly polite to everyone. It was always a part of him, even if he never grew up with that life, he still had blue blood in him.

But when she finds him dressed in a pair of chinos that cost more than her part of the monthly rent and a sports jacket that makes her want to throw some cheap red wine on it, she realizes that he is _not_ meant for this at all; she doesn't even recognize this person staring back at her.

"I couldn't have done it without you," she tells him, even though it's not _really_ him.

**

Logan is expensive – from her haircut to her pumps to her fucking _Porsche_. She puts a possessive arm around Rory's waist and boy, isn't that a familiar sight.

Jess snorts and runs a hand through her wild hair as she walks to her car. She's twenty-one years old and she's too old for this bullshit.

**

If Jess were being generous, she'd say that at least Rory hasn't made the same mistake of dating another idiot. But even though Logan may have read her Proust and Tolstoy, she's a child throwing around Mommy and Daddy's money and undoubtedly mourning over her Hard Life.

But it's not even about Logan – it's the fact that Rory is putting up with it with an embarrassed grimace and not saying a word. She sure learned well from the company she's kept with during her time away from school.

Jess leaves Rory a little fractured – the best belated birthday gift she could give him.

**

" _I don't know what you did, but you've just made my life ten times easier,_ " Luke prefaces when Jess checks in a few days later.

"Yes, because that's my purpose in life," Jess deadpans.

" _You did something – I told you where Rory was, you went to see him…and suddenly days later he's registering back at Yale and leaving the Gilmores and making up with Lorelai._ "

"Huh."

" _Fine, don't take credit, but…you did good._ "

She inhales sharply, picking at a fraying thread at the end of her sweater.

" _So…you're still doing okay?_ "

"Yep. You?"

" _Yeah, business is good. Life's…good._ "

"Good."

The awkward pause following is so typical that it makes her smile a little. "Well, I guess I'll talk to you later."

" _Yeah, sorry, you're probably busy. Uh…take care._ "

"You too."

She hangs up to put each other out of their misery and shakes her head with a smirk.

**

It's kind of nice to know that Rory can still surprise her.

**

…Until it's not when he does the kiss and dash thing again. Charming.

Although, Rory is four years older than the last time. So a few weeks later, Jess gets an e-mail from him with another apology and an inquiry on friendship.

It helps that he attaches a twenty-dollar Amazon gift card. 

_Trying to buy me, Gilmore?_ , she responds, immediately going to Amazon to scour for books.

An hour later, she gets from him: _You? Never. Happy belated birthday. Thank you._

She blinks in surprise.

It is what it is, she concludes as she places her orders, shuts down the computer, and gets back to work. She's sure there's more to come, which will certainly be interesting.


End file.
